Martinsville, Va. ? With 35 laps of frustrating failure behind him and only 13 left to pass Bobby Labonte, Jeff Gordon did what he thinks any other driver would have done.

Gordon used the nose of his car to nudge Labonte out of the way on the first turn of the 487th lap Sunday to win the Virginia 500.

“I race guys the way they race me,” Gordon said. “Bobby raced me clean, but he was definitely crowding me, and he was cutting the entry into the corner pretty short.”

The victory was the 62nd of Gordon’s Winston Cup career, but his first of the season and the first in 16 races, since last September in Kansas City. He won at Martinsville Speedway for the fourth time.

Gordon had been dueling Labonte since they broke free on a restart with 48 laps to go, but Labonte blocked his efforts to pass on both the inside and outside before Gordon finally moved him out of the way.

“Each lap that went by and got closer to the finish, the bumps were going to get harder and harder and harder,” Gordon said. “I was pretty determined to win this race. I thought I was kind of nice about it.”

The four-time champion said he didn’t really even turn into Labonte, but let Labonte turn into him from an outside line entering the turn.

Gordon described Labonte as “a nice guy, and he runs hard and clean, but he doesn’t mind getting the job done and doing what it takes to get that win. He came up to me after the race, and we laughed about it.

“It wasn’t like I just went down in there and took him out.”

Labonte said he had no problem with the bump or the pass, and that he sought out Gordon in Victory Lane purely to congratulate him.